Electrelane

Electrelane are one of those bands I really should have paid much more attention to. Whenever albums came out, they were too expensive and there were always other shows to go to when they played. I only bought No Shouts, No Call this summer when I was in the states, because of the exchange rate the album was finally affordable. The time I saw them play live was at Audioscope 2003, before Ros joined the band. So, with the joys of moving to London, I was finally able to catch them again tonight. By the end of the set, I was annoyed that it has take me so long just to get round to seeing them live again.

They are truly a special band, one that manages to create their own unique sound, but constantly veering away from that sound to try other things. I don’t listen to female musicians enough, but I find that most female performers tend to take their image more seriously than the music they produce. There are very few, like Electrelane, who focus on the music, and not so much on the way they look. As their second last show before an extended break, they played for nearly 2 hours. For many bands, even watching them for 1 hour is too much, but after 2, I still wanted Electrelane to play on.

My birthday month

Right now, December’s looking great. Not only am I going to see Bis on my birthday (though this means that I’m missing out on Forward Russia who are playing on the same night) I am now also going to see Crystal Castles, Dan Deacon, Borderville and Girl Talk, at separate gigs all within 8 days! Better stock up on the sleep now…

Non gig post

Back in April, I briefly wrote about the takeaway shows, a series of videos of bands performing in and around Paris. In the last few months they’ve posted videos of Final Fantasy running down the street, Beirut performing on a street corner, little kiddies dancing to Menomena and Liars drumming a lift. But now, in the collision of some of my favourite things this year, there is a video of Jonquil performing in a park. Their songs don’t have quite the same impact without the rolling drums, but there’s something quite special about the way they sound stripped down.

PS. I wished the crowd at the Beirut gig on Saturday reacted to the last song like this (another classic Blogotheque video). English audiences sometimes are a bit rubbish

I really don’t like big gigs

Dark Beirut, originally uploaded by jellybeanz.

But sometimes I have to bear them. Obviously this photo was taken at the Rough Trade instore gig earlier this week, if I were to post a photo of my view tonight, there would be no Beirut, and a dark photo showing the shoulders of 2 tall men who stood right in front of us instead. Why do tall people ALWAYS stand right in front of me? Luckily I had already seen the band on Monday, or else I would have been quite annoyed that for my £18 ticket, all I could see were brief glimpses of the band.

Their set was really great, and it sounded a lot better than it did on Monday. Zach’s voice sounded just as good as it did earlier in the week, and in their longer set they mixed up tracks from both albums.

It was really just such a shame that I really couldn’t see very much (thank you very much the twat right in front of me who decided to let a girl sit on his shoulders!), though it improved slightly in the second half of the show. There are just some nights when I wished I could go to a big gig and still see a band perform (I have as much right to see something as tall people who paid just as much), without having to hop around and stand on tip toes, just to see the band’s hair.